Established in 1969, Manohar is a publishing house and a bookseller serving individuals and libraries. We export books by mail and have a bookstore at Ansari Road in Delhi.
Manohar initially sold only rare and out of print publications, but soon branched out into local sale/export of new books published in India, and then into publishing of scholarly works under its own imprint.

05 November, 2012

The Plough and The Pen : Peasantry, Agriculture, and the Literati in
Colonial Bengal

By- Bipasha Raha

Since the 1830s
Bengal witnessed a vast outpouring of creative writing. Their authors came from
diverse social background. In some cases their portrayal of the peasantry was a
manifestation of their coherent agrarian thinking. The interest centred on the
legal and social status of peasants; types of tenures and their obligations;
organization of agrarian production; impact of world economic forces on agrarian
economy and; existing land legislations.

This book brings forward hitherto unexplored aspects
of literati perception of peasants and agriculture in colonial Bengal. It
focuses on representation of the peasant in different literary genres, on
issues related to agriculture and rural resuscitation at a time when there was
intensification of the nationalist movement and the necessity of acquiring a
mass base becomes crucial for some members of the literati. Analysis of
vernacular literature, including tract literature and those authored by men not
well known socially, much of it still untapped, makes this book a pioneering
one.

This book will be of interest to
students, researchers and scholars of history, sociology, literature and South
Asian studies.

Bipasha Raha is Associate Professor of
History at Visva-Bharati (a central University), Santiniketan. She was awarded
the Charles Wallace Fellowship by the Charles Wallace India Trust.

Perso-Arabic Hybrids in Hindi: The Socio-Linguistic and Structural Analysis

By- Agnieszka Kuczkiewicz-Fraś

From the very beginning of its existence Hindi has
been subjected to foreign influences. Close contact with Persian brought to
India by Muslim invaders, lasting for several centuries, has borne fruit in the
form of an enormous quantity of borrowings of different types. It has also
reached the most advanced stage in the whole process of enriching one language
by the elements of the other—the phenomenon of hybridization, creating words of
mixed Perso-Hindi etymology, has appeared.

Though hybrid words exist probably in every language,
in Hindi their role is particular. They demonstrate its extraordinary ability
for syncretising new, alien components without much harm to itself.

The main aim of this book is to show the scale of
hybrid Perso-Arabic word-formation in Hindi and to discuss the factors that
have been influencing this hybridsation. The features and linguistic processes
crucial to it have also been pointed out.

Agnieszka
Kuczkiewicz-Fraś studied Indian Philology in Poland and did her M.A. and
Ph.D. in Hindi linguistics from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, where she presently teaches Hindi, Urdu
and Indian History. She has published several articles on Hindi-Urdu
linguistics and on the problems of translation from Indian literataure.